La Marcus Adna Thompson (March 8, 1848 - May 8, 1919 in Ohio, United States) is best known for his early work developing roller coasters, and is sometimes called the "Father of Gravity". Although over his lifetime, Thompson accumulated nearly thirty patents related to roller coaster technologies and built dozens of coasters in the United States, he did not invent the device; that credit goes to John G. Taylor who patented it under the name "Inclined Railway". Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Lamarcus Adna Thompson. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMarcus_Adna_Thompson
